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# Call for Proposals

Our understanding of language is currently undergoing a major shift as
practitioners and researchers from many fields recognise the
constitutive role of embodied interactions in its emergence. Instead
of a primarily symbolic capacity, language is increasingly seen as an
activity fluidly grown from our enaction (i.e. our co-generation and
navigation) of ties and interactions with other bodies. The complexity
of language as we know it seems to be not so much the result of
individual brain-based computing capacities as an emergence from our
constant negotiation of the tensions inherent to the dynamics of
everyday interactions. *Languaging*, rather than language, is thus a
particular way of engaging with others and the world around us, and
pervades all levels of our action and perception.

A strikingly parallel move is happening in the technology world:
reconnecting with research ideas lost behind the emergence of the
Personal Computer, technologists have started to break the
stranglehold of designing devices for the brain in a vat, which
effectively restricts our relationship to machines (and through them
to other humans) to minute finger movements in front of a small screen
filled with symbols. Instead, mediums are being designed to appeal to
body and mind indistinctly, developing rich manual and spatial
dynamics to facilitate interactions with people and machines, without
substituting themselves to an environment conceived as already rich.
Instead of isolating individuals into bodily inertness, such systems
are designed to support us in navigating interactions with other
people and with our own thought processes.

These two movements share strong views about the ways in which
technological creations and scientific questions about body and mind
can be more ethical and humane, while coming from complementary
starting points. For instance, the study of languaging is concerned
with broader experimental validation, when medium design could benefit
from theoretical work to guide future design choices. The ELDM
workshop aims to bring these communities together to share views and
needs. We call for contributions concerned with embodied interactions,
languaging, and humane or interaction-centric computing mediums, and
propose a space to cross-pollinate and exchange about current
developments in academia, technology and arts.

## General topics

- Embodied interactions
- Languaging
- Humane dynamic medium
- Complexity of interactions
- Enactive cognitive science
- Diversity and alterity computing
- Human-computer-human interaction
- Interaction nurturing and support

## Important dates

Submission deadline: **31st December 2019**\
Notification of acceptance: **10th January 2020**

## Guidelines for submitting

There are up to 6 slots for contributed talks or demos, and up to 20
poster slots. Talks will be 20 minutes presentation and 10 minutes
questions.

To submit, please write to
[sebastien.lerique@normalesup.org](mailto:sebastien.lerique@normalesup.org?subject=ELDM2020%20Submission) with the subject line `ELDM2020 Submission`,
and include:
- an abstract of **about 300 words**
- your preference for oral or poster presentation (or another format you would like to propose, e.g. an exhibition)
- the list of authors and affiliations if applicable

